Is this the card that you all are talking about? I will have to do some more research, but the ability to load $5,000 looks great.

I believe they are talking about individual variable VGC's by Metabank. Not reloadable.

Healthnut is correct, the GC's are just "cheap" 1x ones, which are always nice.

I looked at the Travel card you noted previously. The fees to load made it expensive, but without VR's it might be worth another look.

The fees look reasonable to me.

-AAA membership (to get lower reload fees) - $71 (AAA MidAtlantic)
-reload fee - $4.95
-WM MO - $0.70

Assuming one reload of $5,000 a week, your costs would be (71/52)+4.95+0.70=$7.02 per week. $7.02 for a $5,000 load comes out to about 70 cents per $500, which is much cheaper than getting VRs.

I still do not know if this can be reloaded with a CC, though. I am on vacation and will have to ask at an office when I get back.

EDIT: If you can load with a CC online, this would be an VERY easy way to get rid of AmEx GCs.

As far as I know, you can't get a single $5k MO from WM. So your math looks more like:
(71/52) + 4.95 + (.70*5) = ~0.99 per $500

(Still a good deal.)

Can we load bluebird with the travel card? Why is everyone only looking at WM MO?

Datapoint: Just checked the AAA branch in the Toco Hills area of ATL. They do offer VGCs, but no fee waiver promotion.

Good catch. Math was never my strong suit :)

EDIT: If anyone happens to pass by a AAA, it would be great to know whether or not this works and can be loaded with a CC :)

I did some further digging and from what I can see, the fees for the TravelMoney card do make this unattractive unless you reload in person at a branch. Here is what I have found:

Total Cost of Setup
Purchase Fee - $14.95
Companion Card Purchase Fee - $1.50
Monthly Fee - Free
Monthly Inactivity Fee - $1.25

Add Money
At Your AAA location - Free
Online Reload - up to $30.00 (I've been unable to find a breakdown of this so far)

Additional Terms
Maximum Card balance - $9,999
Max reloads, total - Unlimited
Max reloads, per time period - Two (2) times per twenty-four (24) hours, four (4) times per seven (7) days and ten (10) times per thirty (30) days
Max load at AAA branch location - $5,000 per twenty-four (24) hours
Max ACH credit (direct deposit) per load - $5,000 per transaction (also subject to $9,999 total max)
Max online load amt - $1,500 per seven (7) days
Max online loads - One (1) per twenty four (24) hour period. Three (3) loads per seven (7) day period

Where did you find this information? This link seems to indicate that the online maximum load is $5,000.

I did some digging on this a while back and came away thinking it was very likely that the travel money card would be coded as a cash advance on your cc. I did not do a test run however.

http://ww2.aaa.com/scripts/WebObject....0.1.1.0.0#FEE

I think it varies from region to region.

Rates are listed on this T&C page.

Basic terms are at the top, and load terms about a third of the way down the page.

Thank you!


I hope so. The Mid-atlantic page that I linked to had no such fees listed. Once I am back from vacation, I will do a test run.


EDIT: Even if this were true for every area, you could still go in store (assuming that the load codes as a purchase).

Lengthy discussion of a MetaBank (i.e. very likely to be shut down quickly) product. Doesn't seem worth the effort unless you understand you will be shut down or you're just trying to hit a min spend....